← Fame through time1950-1959
The 1950s
Whose names filled the books of the 1950s - anyone at all, however long dead - counted as mentions per million words printed, so a period that simply published more does not inflate anyone.
Talked about then
Whose names appeared most in English books during the 1950s, whenever they lived.
- 1
Jesus25 - 2
Aristotle8.6 - 3
Plato8.2 - 4
Homer7.7 - 5
Augustus4.2 - 6
Cicero4.1 - 7
Johns Hopkins4.0 - 8
Socrates3.9 - 9
George Washington3.8 - 10
Virgil3.7 - 11
Euclid2.5 - 12
Abraham Lincoln2.2 - 13
Theodore Roosevelt1.7 - 14
Thomas Jefferson1.7 - 15
Mark Twain1.6 - 16
Woodrow Wilson1.6 - 17
Benjamin Franklin1.5 - 18
Cleopatra1.5 - 19
Ovid1.5 - 20
Plutarch1.4 - 21
Winston Churchill1.4 - 22
Henry James1.3 - 23
Euripides1.2 - 24
Charlemagne1.2 - 25
Rembrandt1.2 - 26
Herodotus1.2 - 27
Sophocles1.2 - 28
William Henry1.1 - 29
John Adams1.0 - 30
Adam Smith0.99 - 31
Livy0.98 - 32
Galen0.98 - 33
Prince George, Duke of Cumberland0.96 - 34
Pocahontas0.92
- 35
Solon0.90 - 36
Bede0.90 - 37
Henry Ford0.89 - 38
Origen0.89 - 39
Thomas Aquinas0.89 - 40
Hadrian0.87 - 41
Julius Caesar0.87 - 42
Andrew Jackson0.86 - 43
T. S. Eliot0.86 - 44
Mahatma Gandhi0.85 - 45
Pericles0.85 - 46
John Smith0.85 - 47
Aeschylus0.84 - 48
John the Baptist0.82 - 49
John Day0.81 - 50
Thucydides0.79 - 51
Aristophanes0.78 - 52
James I, Count of Urgell0.78 - 53
John Dewey0.77
- 54
John Henry0.76 - 55
Brigham Young0.75 - 56
Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor0.74 - 57
Walt Whitman0.74 - 58
John Marshall0.74 - 59
William Penn0.73 - 60
Herbert Hoover0.73 - 61
John Foster Dulles0.73 - 62
Walter Scott0.72 - 63
Dwight D. Eisenhower0.71 - 64
Alexander Hamilton0.70 - 65
Ahab0.70 - 66
Henry Clay0.67 - 67
Jefferson Davis0.67 - 68
Demosthenes0.66 - 69
Tertullian0.66 - 70
Trajan0.65 - 71
Hippocrates0.65 - 72
Alexander the Great0.64 - 73
Pythagoras0.63 - 74
Xenophon0.63 - 75
Lucretius0.63 - 76
George VI0.63 - 77
Richard II0.62 - 78
Archimedes0.62 - 79
Plotinus0.61 - 80
Strabo0.61 - 81
Jawaharlal Nehru0.60 - 82
Ben Jonson0.60 - 83
Sulla0.60 - 84
John Wesley0.59 - 85
George Eliot0.59 - 86
Osceola0.59 - 87
John Hancock0.58 - 88Ababa0.57
- 89
Harry S. Truman0.57 - 90
Pindar0.56 - 91
Epicurus0.56 - 92
Sam Houston0.55 - 93
James II, Count of Urgell0.55 - 94
Thomas More0.53 - 95
James Madison0.53 - 96
Juniper0.53 - 97
George V0.53 - 98
Robert E. Lee0.52 - 99
Charles Dickens0.52 - 100
Richard III0.52
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 1950s, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
John F. Kennedy11 decades - 2
Jimmy Carter7 decades - 3
Pope John Paul II5 decades - 4
George H. W. Bush2 decades - 5
Nelson Mandela6 decades - 6
Judy Garland9 decades - 7
Marlon Brando7 decades - 8
Frank Sinatra8 decades - 9
Indira Gandhi7 decades - 10
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh0 decades - 11
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi4 decades - 12
Henry Kissinger7 decades - 13
Christopher Lee6 decades - 14
Roald Dahl6 decades - 15
Isaac Asimov7 decades - 16
Ingrid Bergman8 decades - 17
James Dean9 decades - 18
Richard Feynman4 decades - 19
Nicolae Ceaușescunot measured- - 20
Orson Welles9 decades - 21
Lee Kuan Yew7 decades - 22
Kirk Douglas8 decades - 23
Eva Perón8 decades - 24
Édith Piaf6 decades - 25
Charles Bronson5 decades
How to read these rankings
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record. It is not a judgement on the life.
- Fame in print. The curves show how often a name appeared in the books of each decade from 1800 to 2019, drawn from the Google Books Ngram corpus.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, we would rather show nothing than guess.